At last week's Society for Human Resource Management's annual conference, I was struck by how often people mentioned their concerns about rising healthcare costs. This is a business challenge that the HR community is struggling to address. On the positive side, if they can find a way to control costs, they'll gain the attention of their organizations' leaders. On the negative side, controlling costs may mean a shift of the burden from the employer to the individual.
What I began to wonder is what will controlling healthcare costs mean to our region's economic development? The healthcare sector is a large and powerful component of our regional economy. How can we control business costs without hindering the health of the industry itself? Will we be able to control costs without hindering job growth, wages, technological advances, etc.?
Some of the issues are laid out nicely in a US Health and Human Services Report available at: http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/costgrowth/.
What do you think?
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